


if ye be worthy

by hitlikehammers



Series: Marionettes [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: And Mjolnir Knows It, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky is a Better Man Than He Believes Himself To Be, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Schmoop, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:52:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2533124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you know what that is?” Bruce asks, voice low, but that’s not really new, for him.</p><p>“It’s Thor’s hammer-thingy,” Bucky shrugs. “Look, man, I know it was shitty to give it a swing without him knowing, I’m sor—”</p><p>“You <i>swung</i> it?”</p><p> </p><p>  <span class="small">Self-indulgent character-insertion born from this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeREl0f7cRE">Avengers: Age of Ultron</a> sneak peek.</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	if ye be worthy

**Author's Note:**

> This just happened. Ficlets just keep _happening_. I don't know. I can't justify or defend it. Yeah.
> 
> Thank you to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) for reading it through and deciding it wasn't horrid <3

It’s not his style, true.

Well, okay, in the most fundamental sense: it’s kind of very much his style. It matches his suit to the letter. Ha.

But he doesn’t fight like that, typically. He can, he’s been trained to, he is capable—but he doesn’t. He’s a creature of precision, of finesse. Before, and after. 

Still. S’a fucking gorgeous hammer-thing. 

He turns it over, weighs it from one hand to the next: he frowns. It’s a beast of a thing, even with the serum, but it feels heavier, like, a _lot_ heavier, on the left than on the right. He’s gonna have to ask Stark to take a look at the arm.

Goddamnit. He hates it when Stark looks at the arm.

“Barnes!”

It’s a gift and a curse that he’s adjusting, really—more the former than the latter, and he wouldn’t trade what he is for what he was, not now, not _ever_ —but it’s a gift, and it’s a curse, because his hands might still be steady as they ever were in battle, but there’s no fucking way the Winter Soldier would have flinched like a kid with his fingers in the goddamned cookie jar when he gets caught out with a priceless superhero weapon in his hands.

He nearly drops the fucking thing, too, but saves it just in time, fumbling it back to where it was sitting on the coffee table. 

Bucky turns, schools his features into placid innocence, before he makes eye contact with whoever’s stumbled across his alone time with Thor’s hammer.

Fuck, just: not how that sounds, yeah? Not like _that_.

It’s Banner, though. Bucky likes Bruce, calm and unassuming and full of so much _rage_ as he is—Bucky’s found a lot of common ground with Bruce Banner.

“Don’t tell Mr. Lightning, yeah?” 

Bruce walks in, silent, eyeing the hammer on the table with a kind of significance that Bucky’s not sure he understands—it’s gorgeous, he’s established that, but still.

S’a _hammer_.

“Do you know what that is?” Bruce asks, voice low, but that’s not really new, for him.

“It’s Thor’s hammer-thingy,” Bucky shrugs. “Look, man, I know it was shitty to give it a swing without him knowing, I’m sor—”

“You _swung_ it?”

Bucky’s eyes narrow at the gravity in the question that really doesn’t seem to belong there. “Not like,” Bucky flails his hands about in exaggerated combat. “I just wanted to see what was what with it, y’know? Feel out the heft of it. Y’never know when you’re gonna get stuck with nothing but your teammate’s weapons in the field. Gotta know what you’re gonna be playing ball with.”

“Not Mjolnir,” Bruce says, and Bucky doesn’t know what to make of the doctor’s normally soft tones getting all clipped, getting all heavy. He’s leaning down, looking at the hammer, squinting hard at it before he reaches and gives it a push.

Except, he doesn’t give it a push. He gives it a nothing. The thing doesn’t move.

“Wanna lift it again for me? Just to see?” Bruce asks, patient, but there’s an edge Bucky doesn’t quite know how to place.

“Man, Thor’s not gonna be happy—”

“Please,” Bruce says, and his eyes are sharp, clear, focused where his mouth is curved in encouragement, and Bruce has a lot of fucking layers, man.

Bucky sighs, and gives in. Bruce is as much of a friend as any of them are gonna be. Might as well give the man what he wants.

He grasps the hilt, and lifts, and yeah, he groans with it—like he said, the fucker’s heavy, and he might be a suped-up soldier, but Thor’s a _god_ , okay, it doesn’t even level—but he gives Bruce a tilt of his head and a lift of his eyebrows. “Satisfied?”

Bruce doesn’t answer. Bucky sets the damned thing back down.

“Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy” Bruce says, points at the hammer, toward carvings that Bucky hadn’t noticed before; “shall possess the power of Thor.”

Bucky blinks. He’s not sure he understands. Because what he thinks he understands is not actually possible.

So he doesn’t understand. Yep.

“It doesn’t mean lifting it just goes ahead and _makes_ you Thor, or anything,” Bruce tells him, conversational-like; idle. “But it does mean you’d be worthy.” 

Bruce walks over to the refrigerator and grabs a bottle of water, like he didn’t just say words that made no sense. 

“I can lift it,” Bruce goes on, offering Bucky a drink, but Bucky’s mostly gaping at him, staring blind, and Bruce shrugs before he shuts the door and saunters back toward Bucky, taking a long drink before he adds: “Sometimes.”

Bucky’s still staring. He thinks that’s probably the appropriate response, really.

“The others don’t know.”

Which isn’t surprising, really. Like he said: he and Bruce are friends. Kind of. They’ve said a lot of things to one another, under the cover of night, that other people don’t know.

But it’s surprising, in the way that it always is, that Bucky’s the one he’d say it to, if he’s going to say it at all. 

_Worthy_.

Bucky shakes his head. There’s gotta be something wrong, there.

“I asked Selvig about it, out of scientific curiosity,” Bruce carries on. “He said he’d heard, somewhere, that it had to do with the state of the soul,” Bruce’s gaze narrows, and Bucky’s never understood how Banner could read him, could see into his head and pick the questions out before they’re asked: find the doubts and weigh them against logic just as they start to fester, just before they spread. “Which was why it could change, why a person could be worthy one minute,” Bruce smiles, small and self-deprecating: no humor to it, no joy: “and unworthy the next.”

Bucky opens his mouth to say something, anything, but mostly he just gapes, like a dead fish, as he stares at Bruce, and at the hammer, and then back at Bruce.

He closes his mouth.

“Thor doesn’t talk about home that much,” Bruce crosses his arms and makes himself small, and Bucky’s learned what that means, what that betrays about what’s in Bruce’s head. 

“But, from what I’ve gathered, from him, and from Jane, and Darcy and Erik and the stories, being worthy is a complicated thing,” Bruce looks up, and pierces him with the eyes that he shares with the Hulk, that are powerful and penetrating and soft and hard all at once: “It has to do with more than just being good, or being righteous, or, whatever.” 

Bucky swallows; grounds himself in the whir of his left arm as his hands clench.

“There’s a level of awareness to it,” Bruce says, makes speculation sound empirical. “A selflessness, to protect, to do what’s best beyond your own interests. To know loss and to overcome it,” he tilts his head; “To overcome even a loss of the self.” 

He stares at Bucky with a level of knowing that makes him feel exposed, makes him feel caged: but it’s different, now. He can handle it, even where it prickles at every nerve ending, even where he feels the urge to run.

“A, fortitude, if you will,” Bruce keeps on, staring off, now: allowing Bucky to regroup. “A resiliency. The ability to see one’s mistakes and make amends, but more, I think, the ability to take what’s learned into yourself and grow from it.”

Bruce bites his lip and looks at Bucky, looks long and hard and Bucky feels something burning in him, feels something screaming and shaking and it’s exhausting, he feels spent, and he doesn’t know why.

He doesn’t want to know why.

Bruce’s mouth quirks into a wry grin as he shrugs.

“It’s also possible I’m talking out my ass, though, so.”

Bucky laughs, harsh and unanticipated, and Bruce’s grin fills out to a smile.

“I can’t move it today,” he offers, and it’s only then that Bucky sees that the smile’s real sad. “Me and the big guy,” Bruce shakes his head, lets an abortive noise escape the back of his throat. “S’not a good time.”

And Bucky knows that, Bucky feels that and aches for that, Bucky has sympathy for that—feels camaraderie and kinship in that struggle in a way he didn’t think he’d ever be able to find, and he hurts, sometimes, when he thinks that he’s getting better, he’s moving forward, he’s leaving that part of him in ever-darker corners, finding ever-more control, while Bruce—

It will always be different for Bruce, and the world’s just not fucking fair.

“Steve could budge it. Last he tried.”

Bucky’s head snaps upward, and he meets Bruce’s eyes with his own, flayed wide, bared whole.

“But only just. And no one else.” Bruce smiles, a little soft as he adds: “Though I have my suspicions about Natasha, if she’d give it a go.”

Bucky’s mouth feels dry.

“What are you saying?”

“Exactly what I said.” Bruce shrugs, in that way of his. It’s fucking infuriating.

Bucky opens his mouth to say just that when he hears a call from the adjoining hall:

“Bucky?”

Bruce looks up, recognizing Steve’s voice where Bucky’d known he was coming as soon as he’d registered the steps, the cadence: he always knows where Steve is. 

He always knows.

Bruce nods, like he’s heard the words in Bucky’s head again—like he understands precisely what they mean. “I’ll leave you to it.”

He slips into the elevator just as Steve rounds the corner.

“Hey,” Steve looks around, takes in the empty room, quirks an eyebrow at the doors of the lift but doesn’t say anything, just focuses on Bucky, just walks to him and places soft hands on Bucky’s shoulders, breathes close enough that Bucky can taste him on the air. 

“I woke up and you weren’t there,” Steve’s voice is low, his thumbs rubbing circles into Bucky’s flesh. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky shrugs, but not enough to take Steve’s hands away, not enough to break the contact, just enough to ease the worry in those sky-sore eyes. “Yeah, I just...”

Bucky shakes his head, smiles with only the slightest hint of strain, and places his hand on Steve’s back as he leads them away, leads them toward their floor, their room, their bed, their—

“Buck.”

There’s something dangerous, something untold in Steve’s tone, just then, and it makes Bucky’s chest clench—he follows Steve’s gaze downward. To the table.

To the hammer.

And sure, it’s a well-known fact—Thor stores his hammer just so. Straight up and down.

Bucky left it kinda crooked.

Steve’s eyes go wide, putting the pieces together, and when something starts shining in them, like vindication and pride and happiness and love all put together until it overflows, until it’s too warm and too much to hold back, Bucky moves with it, welcomes the blow as all that _feeling_ hits him and sinks into his veins, and he can’t help the smile that settles, the ease that suffuses his body, his bones, and when he growls, when he warns against Steve making the point that he’s been saying this all along—that Bucky’s good, that Bucky’s safe, that Bucky’s whole and strong and impossible and perfect and _everything_ : when he growls, it’s not effective, it can’t be, not when he’s that filled with fucking _joy_ :

“Don’t you dare say it, Rogers.”

Steve’s grin just widens. 

“What,” he reaches, plays with Bucky’s hair where it falls along his jaw, “that I told you s—”

Bucky leans up, and presses into Steve’s open mouth, and lets himself lick the taste of wonder off those gorgeous fucking lips—and worthy might be pushing it, really.

But this feels fucking _right_.

**Author's Note:**

> On [tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com), as ever <3
> 
>  
> 
> And for the record, because some people have asked: Steve's "budge" of Mjolnir and Bruce's acknowledgement of it as such is totally up for interpretation, and is left so deliberately. I've got my own headcanon there in terms of where comicverse ends and the MCU begins, and it's way beyond the scope of this little self-serving spot of Bucky-love ;) 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [If Ye Be Worthy (the Stubborn as a Brick Wall Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3169454) by [Taste_is_Sweet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_is_Sweet/pseuds/Taste_is_Sweet)




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